Easter Eggs, The Old Fashioned Way

[posted April 22nd, 2011 at 10:33 pm]

After a phenomenal five hours in church for Fr. Rutler’s powerful meditation on the seven last words of Christ and liturgy at Our Savior Church, I realized that we still needed to get ready for Saturday’s Easter Basket Blessing. This is a Polish tradition that I will explain more in an upcoming post. On Holy Saturday, we always get our basket ready for a blessing, so we can eat delicious and blessed food on Easter Sunday!

Since Husband and I have been trying to live our lives more simply and more naturally, the way my parents raised me, I jumped at the idea of dying our Easter eggs naturally. We did that when I was growing up, but for the last few years, I kept buying those bright colored kits because it was more convenient for lots of people to decorate eggs at our annual Easter decorating parties.

With my father’s assistance, we began the process. Because we started with cage free brown eggs, the colors weren’t going to change drastically, but it was fun to do nonetheless.

Cup of Boiled Blueberries

Coffee Grinds boiled for the deep brown color.

First, we boiled the eggs. At the same time, we had three pots filled with 2 cups of water and our desired natural ingredients to make the different colors. I decided to use frozen blueberries for the purple color, onions for the golden color and coffee grounds for the dark brown color.

Straining Blueberries

Using Hubby's Chemex to Strain the Coffee Grinds

Once we had boiled the water with these ingredients, we strained it into cups and added vinegar to brighten the colors. We left the eggs in the cups overnight in the fridge to give them a richer color.

My mother bought decorative sleeves for the eggs from a Polish store. The colors were magnificent and think it will add a lot to our basket tomorrow.

Pretty Easter Egg Sleeves, also called "Pisanki" in Polish

I placed the sleeve on, ever so tenderly! :)

After, you place the sleeve on the egg–all the eggs are different sizes, so sometimes it’s more of a challenge, then you place them in boiling water. The sleeves shrink tightly around the egg when you dip them in hot water.